Eyas-Musket?

“How now, my eyas-musket! What news with you?”

Unlike the lookout in Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, the visitor to my neighbour’s garden was female. A 2024 vintage (1cy) locally-born Sparrowhawk, its parents courted over my home back in the clear, cold spring mornings of March. Musket being the name by which the male is known.

Unfortunately for Woodie, the recently-fledged Wood Pigeon born in the garden bay tree, his destiny was to ensure there will be more Sparrowhawks next year. An impressively adroit ambush hunter, this accipiter keeps ecological balance through its gamekeepering of the young, old and sick.